


Tech Support

by Bremmatron33



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Chronic Pain, Mentions of Character Death, Robo gore maybe?, Robo violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:50:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9620876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bremmatron33/pseuds/Bremmatron33
Summary: Soundwave's been getting nervous as the number of Decepticons has started to dwindle. Things aren't looking up for the better anytime soon.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wow so this was actually the original tone I was going for for The Doc's Out but as always I battle with writing them how I can actually see them happen and writing them how I want them to be (I.E. cute) The Doc's Out turned into more of that cute or at least it will down the road but this is more, could have happened? Anyway hope you give it a read and hope you like it!

The medbay had been empty for cycles and at first, it was nothing, no one even noticed... but after the most recent mining excursion, Soundwave was starting to notice the casualties. Broken, leaking Vehicons limped across the ship as they stood at their stations or attempted to complete their onboard duties, worse off ones slowly died in their barracks, the floors sticky and reeking of spilt energon. At first, the TIC assumed the drones were just staying away from the medic thanks to a foul mood swing but one of them usually broke by now and risked going despite Knock Out’s temper. The doctor was cruel and snippy with the drones but he did his job. In fact, he usually did it so well that deaths and injuries were usually barely noticeable. Perhaps an obvious limp or bent wing that a vehicon didn’t want to go and get an entire replacement for, as was Knock Out preferred method, but nothing like the massacre that lined the Nemesis halls now. Injured Vehicons were usually back to brand new in hours and the ones too broken to repair were quickly re-purposed before even Soundwave could gather which numbers hadn’t survived. Even in a foul mood, the overly hygienic Knock Out would go searching for the lost causes to put them out of their misery and keep the other drones safe from contracting further diseases. So after stepping in a pool of sickly green oil and energon the TIC went to solve the problem.

He gathered from the drones that the reason they hadn’t gone to see Knock Out simply was because he wasn’t in the medbay and he wasn’t answering any comm. It was strange considering the medic had been fine enough after his mission and run in with a human train. Nothing but cosmetic damage that he had quickly fixed and yet it wasn’t unusual for the medic to mope after failure. So as expected as Soundwave unlocked the doors to check he found the medbay was once again empty. Soundwave sighed, it was quite the detriment to no longer have Breakdown happily working when the head medic couldn’t find the energy. Sending both their heavy hitters out to off someone as manipulative and crafty as Airachnid had been a poor move. One that Soundwave had tried to convince Megatron against in favor of the leader going himself as was only proper when getting rid of a higher officer but they had been throwing all sorts of Decepticon ways to the wind for the sake of convenience as of late.

Soundwave didn’t dwell on the bitter thoughts as he made his way to Knock Out’s personal quarters. A trip he made in secret more than he cared to admit….although it usually led to nothing. There, he knocked on the heavy metal door for longer than he should have if he was being honest. Spy or no Soundwave did like giving mechs privacy to an extent and this certainly fit that category. Displeasure was after all not dissent and Soundwave still believed mechs should have the security to criticize the higher authority. Even if Knock Out had made some very shady deals with Starscream in the past he wasn’t exactly a threat. The spy knew from experience that the medic’s deals never ended as they were written out.

Realizing he wasn’t going to receive an answer though Soundwave smoothy dispatched one of his cables and connected it to the door’s lock pad. The code popped up in seconds and the door slid open with ease. The first thing that hit him as he entered was the pleasant smell of wax, perfume, and overall clean. He remembered it well. Knock Out was such a stickler for change especially when it came to his favorite products. Despite the medic’s room being cluttered with a few knickknacks from his journeys they were always dusted and well maintained, the walls to the room constantly washed and even sometimes buffed but that hadn’t needed to happen as of late, although they looked like Knock Out had taken out some frustrations on them only presently. Quite a few frustrations in fact. Foregoing the obvious for a moment Soundwave couldn’t help but linger and follow along the marked up walls. The words illegible thanks to Knock Out’s fancy script but familiar enough. The spy had seen them before. Written and carved by less skillful servos. Prayers and curses to the darkest of Cybertron’s gods. Knock Out had never been the religious sort but as a close friend of Conduit and the other medic’s flock. Knock Out had known the sermons by spark, quoted them comically whenever things looked bad despite having little belief in them. Soundwave always liked listening to them but he hadn’t brought them up in eons. He had no need to, he had been happy for the most part. Knock Out hid the pain of his loss well but there was no denying it now.

Soundwave found Knock Out, as expected, still on his berth. Had the medic been fine he would have awoken instantly at the sound of his door being forcefully opened, at the sound of even the spy’s careful movements, at the sudden feeling of another field that wasn’t his partner’s invading his space. Knock Out was quite a hard mech to sneak up on but Knock Out was not fine. He was in stasis. A rather deep and yet fully controllable stasis. A medical stasis.

Most medics had this sort of ability, after all when all alone or worse surrounded by a ship full of soldiers and injured who did the medic have hope of coming across to get help from? Likely no one, so they learned long ago how to maximize their auto repairs to their fullest potentials. It was practically the only thing that kept most of them alive. From his spot, Soundwave could hear the desperate whirring of fans and machinery but the doctor didn’t look injured. The spy inched closer, wary of the medic’s quick reflexes and sharp saws should he be startled awake and slowly placed his head to Knock Out’s chest. His frame was warm and staticky and his insides were grinding painfully, the flow of energon to his usually efficient engine almost undetectable. As he righted himself Soundwave was overcome for a moment by a wash of sickness himself. He felt for a moment his internals burn as his wires and gears jumped and pulsed. The spy took a large step back and cursed as he looked the medic over again. Soundwave was sure now that it could only be one thing afflicting the good doctor. Radiation.

* * *

 

Radiation bombs had been popularized by the Senate as non-lethal ways to subdue most mechanical organisms. The non-lethal element meant that they were a popular weapon used by Autobots as well. Radiation made most mechs sick for a few cycles, put them down for the count, but the effects were easily neutralized by even the dumbest mech, medical or no. They were a nuisance but the en mass aspect and overall undetectable nature made them a very useful weapon to those who knew how to use them. So naturally, the Decepticon engineers and scientists learned how to make them better. So the Autobots too had to step up their game. This race continued for quite some time till unbeknownst to both sides the radiation in said bombs stopped being non-lethal. As the war wore on several side effects from the bombs also came to light. The worst of them all being flare-ups and build up.

As the radiation in the bombs worsened the more unstable it became, the more powerful, the more unpredictable, and most importantly the more untreatable. On the surface it washed away just as all the others had so if treated quickly enough radiation that was meant to make soldiers sick for months or even years barely affected them for a few days but if they were sensitive enough, if they relied more on their field, their processor, their internal matrix rather than their brute strength….the problem always came back. The mechs own charge fueling the radiation that had sunk to deeper, less treatable protoform and internals to flare back to life and coat the mech's frame again entirely. It could be washed away again, and again, and again but it continued to come back and wreak havoc. Soundwave himself had dealt with it and thankfully as was common by mechs who were only met with radiation once or twice outlived its decay rate but that was only half the problem.

Soldiers who would be expected to deal with radiation on longer terms were simply better armored, better protected, but the most obvious mechs forced to deal with radiation were not. So most medics had suffered radiation build up. It had afflicted other mechs as well: weapons designers who used nuclear cores and engineers who manned ships that also ran on nuclear, and they usually died the same unsuspecting deaths thanks to flare up but medics were the best-known victims. Running through irradiated fields and dealing with irradiated soldiers for joors without the proper armor thickness, risking open chest plates and multiple transformations to serve and save patients left them vulnerable. The constant cleanliness of a proper medbay and its regulated decon kept them safe and healthy for the most part on the surface but below their deepest protoforms and internals were almost as bad as the bombs being dropped around them.

At the prime of the war Decepticon medics were so badly irradiated that they could go without fuel for years. They’re weapons never running out, and their frame perfectly functioning. The only problem was they would quite literally explode at random. Their sparks would simply go supernova without warning. Medics who chose to combat their irradiated cores had to do so constantly, detox treatments three or four times a cycle to keep themselves from reaching dangerous levels. The bold ones learned how to use the energy to it’s fullest potential. Decepticon medics grew to be feared not just because of their disregard for ethics but because they were untouchable. Tragically no sane mech would go near them without a death wish. And because, with the right equipment, even the conscientious ones could knock out whole squadrons with a single attack.

This sort of power though came at a price. Flare-ups. Radiation flare-ups in medics were almost always instant killers in the beginning. One cycle the mech would be perfectly fine and the next morning they’d be dead. Optics blown out, spark null, and glowing as brightly as a warming blaster. No warning. Out of the thirty thousand medics, the Decepticons had conscripted cause of death thanks to radiation was seventy-three percent. Soundwave considered it even higher because the ten percent suicide rate was almost always because of chronic pain thanks to radiation build up and non-lethal flare-ups. Once Megatron and the other officers saw that they could use the medics on both fronts they threw all caution and consideration for the mechs lives out the window. Medics were seen as useless if they weren’t also walking nuclear cores but higher-ups weren’t just to blame. Medical bays grew scarce as the war continued, medics couldn’t keep their levels down despite the use of the bombs staying at a constant pace and living and working on the ground only kept them radioactive. Ticking time bombs.

Knock Out was no exception. He had actually once been given an honor by Megatron for killing one hundred and fifty Autobot wreckers who had been sent in to break Decepticon hold on the small city of Neo Fehrenx. Knock Out had caught them outside of the hospital, played overjoyed neutral and had led them into the building to fuel up. Only two of the team made it free to tell the tale and Knock Out’s reputation was cemented in Autobot history. None of the medic's previous heroics seemed to matter anymore though. Perhaps that’s why the medic slowly stopped caring.

With constant maintenance and care for his frame Knock Out managed to stave off death and outlive most of his other more wild medics. Constantly living on the edge of certain death, he wore his condition with pride despite the constant pain it caused. Glowing like a terrifying or lifesaving beacon even in the smokiest battles, rife with blaster fire. The adrenaline and power had simply been worth it when he was a younger mech. Now, like his Autobot counterpart, he still wore it with pride despite not being near lethal limits in eons. His complex optics once a brilliant red, now shaded and stained for all eternity thanks to the midnight blue energon that once ran through his lines and flooded his optics.

This didn’t stop the flare-ups. With his levels, they were constant, sometimes even often predictable but any little thing could bring them on just as easily. With a flare-up, along with his luminescent metal and blinding headlights, came pain. Throbbing, grinding, tight pain that made a mech sick and stiff. It made a mech feel like the machine they ultimately were, and a broken one at that. The medic’s blistering chassis causing his systems and protocols to malfunction or disconnect at random. Rendering him incapacitated for the most part. Useless.

* * *

 

As Soundwave looked Knock Out over he couldn’t help but wonder, would the medics optics be their old lavender too?

It was a dumb thought, a selfish one. It should have been if Knock Out was okay, if he would make it through the night since the flare-up had likely happened cycles ago and the radiation had already built up to a somewhat dangerous level, but it wasn’t because the second thought the spy had after seeing the medic was simply that he had no need to worry, Breakdown would take care of this. As he had taken care of the medic so many times in the past. Except there was no Breakdown. No one was going to take care of this and without treatment Knock Out would die. Even in stasis, the radiation would worsen till Knock Out’s frame went completely haywire, till he couldn’t even vent or get energon to his engines and if lack of fuel didn’t kill him first he would just gutter out. His frame and spark no longer used to the extreme levels it once reveled in would become disrupted and fade away.

“Slag.” Slag was right. As a mech with quite a lot of circuitry himself, Soundwave couldn’t exactly handle the medic in his state and even if he could he didn’t exactly remember the detox formula. He hadn’t used it since his own bout of irradiation and hadn’t been around Knock Out enough since his arrival on the ship to care to relearn it. Hopefully, there would be some record of it on the medbay’s computers and if not perhaps Dreadwing knew the treatment. With those thoughts and knowing Knock Out had dealt with worse flare-ups and survived Soundwave didn’t panic... at first.

The spy instructed a functioning vehicon to provide the healer with a large dose of fresh energon and then headed off back to his job. With luck Knock Out could even awake and heal himself. It was highly probable with as tenacious a mech the medic could be when he wanted.

With a lull in the databases though Soundwave did attempt to search through Knock Out’s computers, accessing them through his own he dug through hundreds of medical files, searching for the simple cure. Unsurprisingly there was nothing there. The medics were after all trained by word of mouth. They told each other secrets and treatments through bribes and favors, never giving anything away for free. The detox formula was just so well known that they had no reason to write it down. Primus Soundwave felt like such a fool for his memory lapse. Surely Dreadwing would know it though, all Soundwave had to do was wait for the mining commander to return to base.

Even with the knowledge that Dreadwing would certainly remember the formula Soundwave found his processor wandering as he chided himself again and again, how could he possibly have forgotten it? Even after all this time? To rid himself of the stressful wait he made a quick trip to Lord Megatron. Certainly, he would know.

“A detox formula? That’s a question for our medic Soundwave I don’t remember any of that! It’s been eons since the Autobots have been so brazen to use weapons like that after all. Although now that you remind me of it it sounds like a rather ingenious idea~ What do you think an E-bomb would do to the Autobots precious fleshlings? Should we get Knock Out to make us one?” Soundwave stared the leader dead in the optics behind his mask. How was it that he didn’t know either? This was impossible.

Not to alert the leader any more than he needed to Soundwave gave Megatron a slow nod then headed back to his station. That had been a slightly worrying failure and did nothing to ease his concern that their medic could die any second he pleased without warning. To his luck, one of the Vehicons stopped by to report that Knock Out had woken up and was still able to walk about. Soundwave vented a sigh of relief. The problem had solved itself. So he put it out of his thoughts and went back to scouring the Iacon databases.

Two cycles later though nothing had changed and after staring at a one-armed Vehicon for about an hour Soundwave couldn’t stop himself from heading over to the wounded mech to poke at him. Knock Out would only have needed a few rounds of detox to get back to a workable order. He would have still been sick, sore and moody but nothing too bad. Nothing he wasn’t used to dealing with. The Vehicons would have flooded him the moment he could use his servos again. This shouldn’t be.

“Soldier. Query?” Soundwave carefully poked the Vehicon’s poorly bandaged shoulder. The vehicon shivered under his superior’s touch but didn’t seem to be in any pain.”

“Commander Soundwave I umm...I haven’t seen Knock Out in almost half an orn. Last I knew he was in his room. I think he’s sick sir.”

“Status: Handled. Dispatched: Soldier GL566939B. Report: Successful.”

“Uh yeah, I heard about that. I-I don’t know what to tell you except he’s gone missing again sir.”

“Soldier: Define missing?”

“He’s not in the medbay and he’s not in his room sir.”

Soundwave did not want to look like he was panicking but he did leave the soldier quicker than he meant to. The drone likely wouldn’t notice the increase in speed but Soundwave wished his spark could calm down. Making a round of every obvious place he could think of and finding it empty he went to recruit Dreadwing. The other officer didn’t seem to grasp the urgency Soundwave was trying to convey but went searching regardless. The thought of losing Knock Out was simply an undesirable one. They had already lost enough mechs and with victory so close at servo losing another capable soldier was just not feasible besides, if the medic did die Megatron was never going to get his bomb. With Dreadwing searching the ship Soundwave returned to his station to find the medic’s signature in case the sportscar had simply driven off to take some leisure time. As the TIC punched in the controls though only errors came up. Knock Out’s signal was corrupted. That was impossible. That could only happen if he was still suffering from his radiation flare-up... but Knock Out had woken up, he had been walking around, he should have fixed himself already!

“Soundwave we have a problem.” Dreadwing’s voice sent shivers down the spy’s back strut. He despised problems but this time he knew exactly what was wrong. He could feel the medic’s charge throbbing like a sun at his back, the sickly deformity of it making the TIC’s plates jump like the old days. How could this be? It felt as if the medic’s levels had jumped significantly, dangerously. Soundwave slowly turned and nodded his acknowledgment. “Knock Out isn’t doing so well as I’m sure you can feel. I’ve wrapped him up to keep us safe as I could but this is an issue.”

“Dreadwing: Query? Knock Out: Location?” Soundwave continued to stare at the medic, trying to think of any acceptable course of events.

“I found him with the Insecticons. They….well I suppose somehow one of them found him. It was quite a feat to get them to give him up. It is alarming how simplistic they are not to grasp that he’s dying. His glowing frame must be some sort of strange attraction to them. What do you think is the best course of action?”

Soundwave pointed to Dreadwing. “ Dispatch.”

“You want me to handle this?” Dreadwing looked down at Knock Out unsure as if he didn’t know what to do. Soundwave felt his spark seize, the jet’s assumed ignorance was starting to send off pings in the spy’s neural net. After all once was an accident, twice a coincidence, this made it a pattern. “Understood.” Soundwave let his plates ruffle and smooth. Finally. That was that. He turned back to his station as Dreadwing’s ped steps faded away. Still...for the life of him, his processor wouldn’t settle. He felt….guilty...disgusted...of at what he couldn’t place but he simply couldn’t make the feelings go away.

They returned a little ways into the night. “I’ve got him awake again and soaking in a detox. Should I stay with him? We wouldn’t want another accident after all.” Soundwave took a look at the wall of text then waved Dreadwing off. The new mining commander would need to head out in another few hours when the troops were rested so it was best that he recharged when he could. Soundwave could watch over the medic. “Are you sure Soundwave? Lord Megatron-” A sudden low blaring alarm emitted from Soundwave’s chassis as a vivid red stop sign displayed on his visor.

“Dreadwing: Relieved. Go.” Dreadwing nodded curtly, a little ticked off by the rude gesture but turned to leave anyway. He was still wary about the situation as a whole but he wasn’t about to refuse Soundwave’s orders even though he could. Afterall he was still exhausted from helping out the miners so if Soundwave wanted to watch over the Doctor and risk their leader’s ire he was more than welcome. If they spy wanted time with Knock Out that badly then he must have had his reasons. With the other jet gone again, Soundwave deployed Laserbeak, set her to scan, and headed off to the commissary.

* * *

 

Warm fuel in servo Soundwave moved silently along the halls of the Nemesis onward to the medbay. He knew he should have had his entire attention on the databases but Laserbeak was a competent enough minicon, she would alert him instantly if anything pinged in his search program. Knock Out was unstable despite how tall he stood in the face of pain and loss. A long time ago they had been there for each other through such endeavors and now…..he could be there again if he was careful enough.

Knock Out was sitting in back in the barebones metal bath, a soaked washrag covering his face. Soundwave made sure to make his steps noticeable as he found a spot next to the medic on the floor. He still couldn’t sit too close but it was a comfortable enough distance, an amiable distance. Carefully he set both cubes of energon down and popped the latch of his visor.

“My, my getting personal are we Soundwave~ I thought those days were long behind us.” To anyone else Knock Out’s tone was smooth, light, and teasing as it always was but Soundwave could hear how strained it was. How careful he was being with every single well-practiced word. Knock Out reached over and held out his servo for the fuel, Soundwave carefully picked up the right cube and placed it on his palm. He had made sure to put a heavy concoction of mineral powders and crystal supplements in the Doctor’s. Funny how he could remember the right mixture for that of all things. A shiver ran up his spine as Knock Out raised the cube to drink. It was like he was being crushed from the inside out. Every input, every slight movement was a fight with his own frame. The overwhelming grotesque grinding that filled Soundwave’s audials made him squirm. “Mm~ It’s warm. To what do I owe the occasion?”

Knock Out like most medics had grown used to the pain eons ago but Soundwave never could conceive how. He barely remembered his own flare-ups before they finally died off but they had left him berth ridden and nauseated for orns every time. He remembered not even being able to stand, relying on Rumble and Frenzy for every little thing. And though he had managed to push through and serve when needed regardless, those times were still nothing but agony. At that time his levels had been just at the risk level. Knock Out’s levels were more than three hundred times that and that was nothing for what he once lived with. Soundwave only had fleeting, well-hidden memories of those levels. How he’d risk them despite the agony they caused. “Are you alright Knock Out? You’re never gotten this sloppy.” Picking up his own cube of fuel Soundwave bit through the protective film and sipped slowly.

“Certainly not. It wasn’t a mistake.” Knock Out let the reality of his words sink in, or perhaps he just took a break to vent, it was hard to tell with the medic. “Is there something troubling you commander, you haven’t spoken to me like this since the exodus.”

Soundwave stilled for a long moment before lowering his cube again. “You can’t be serious Knock Out. Why would you do that?”

Knock Out carefully removed the rag from his face and leaned up and over to rest his frame on the edge of the bath. He gave the spy a long dead-eyed stare as he slowly drank his energon. Soundwave couldn’t look the medic head on, couldn’t stare into those drowned optics; already so flooded with fuel they looked like a sparkling’s future-telling toy. Still red though, the energon not nearly brackish enough yet. “I want you to look me right in my optics and fucking ask me that again you hypocritical glitch of Solus.”

Soundwave couldn’t look the medic in the optics but he could feel the chill of Knock Out’s em field like an icy wind around him. It was deserved. There was no way he could say that he hadn’t helped drive the medic to do this. “You don’t have to do this. No one’s ordering you-”

“Oh really~ So I guess I just imagined all the things Lord Megatron said to me! I suppose I misheard all the things you agreed with? I can take a hint Soundwave. My strength came from my spark and….I haven’t shone in millennia. If I’m going to suffer I might as well get something from it!” Knock Out stood and stepped over the lip of the bath. Bringing down his ped he tipped it over and let the already oversaturated solvent slosh out and flow towards the drain in the floor.

“This is suicide. We need you as our medic.”

“Oh~” Soundwave barely dodged the heavy metal tub. “Say that to my face.”

“You’re letting your emotions cloud your processor. Knock Out you are a wiser mech than this.” Soundwave had expected the kick but he didn’t expect it to hurt so much. He couldn't block it, touching any part of the medic might as well have been like grabbing the end of his energon prod. The short detox bath had done nothing to even subside the energy coating his frame. When the medic grabbed for his throat Soundwave felt a surge of panic in his spark. Knock Out hadn’t reacted this strongly to anything since the day they put down Motormaster.

Trapped in Knock Out’s grip Soundwave felt like he was melting, all of his circuitry, all of his signals, frequencies, and warnings all pinging or screaming errors as they fluxed and corrupted, drowning the spy in a coffin of white noise he hadn’t experienced since his days on the streets. The sudden wall against his back might as well have been a building toppling on top of him for how his back felt as if it had shattered into pieces. Knock Out's ex-vents so close against his frame felt like the heat of a just fired tank barrel. “My emotions? Soundwave if I had let my emotions cloud my processor I would be dead because I would have already attempted to murder the lot of you. What I think you’re so concerned about are your emotions. Are your afraid of little old me?” Knock Out didn’t need an answer, he could feel it. “Good, because I’m not here for you. Any of you.” Dropping the spy he turned to leave but Soundwave rushed forward. Knock Out was a threat now, he’d even admitted it. He needed to be handled.

Just as he took a moment to clear his head he let the noise consume him as he grabbed hold of whatever bit of Knock Out he could. It burned just as worse as it had before. He let his tendrils loose and closed the claspers turning it into a bore. Energon splashed the two of them as Soundwave pierced through the medic’s tanks but Knock Out stood unaffected. He turned, not even quickly, and wrapped an arm around the spy, pinning him to the wall again. Flush against Knock Out Soundwave felt his lines start to boil, his plates start to itch. The medic must have been steadily irradiating his core, it was the only explanation, the only way he could be this bad off already. Whatever was left in Knock Out’s lines dripped from his nose and the corners of his optics as he flared his field. Soundwave found himself retching despite how hard he tried to keep his systems under his control.

Slowly, two of the medic’s talons pierced through the spy’s intake, another two through his jaw pinning Soundwaves head in place. It wasn’t painful, they were far beyond that threshold by now. Soundwave swallowed around them, the strange feeling inciting old sparks in a place he really didn’t need them to be right now. Knock Out stroked the long flat sides of Soundwave’s helm with his free thumb. He could feel the energon boiling up into the spy’s intake. “Now Soundwave why did you have to go and do that hm? Honestly, you jumped to conclusions and that’s unlike you. Did you honestly think I would even think about stepping a micrometer out of line till I thought I could take you? Honestly~ do you know how long this is going to take to fix now? And you~ you’re so thin now. We can’t play like we used to.”

Even with his thoughts scattered Soundwave couldn’t stop himself from focusing on Knock Out’s frame. His own engine roaring, screaming, hear the sparks crackling with every drop of leaking energon. He could smell it burning, smell Knock Out burning. The medic was going to die if nothing happened if Soundwave didn’t do something. The spy knew what he had to do, knew how to knock the medic off balance but he worried how far Knock Out would go, if he could risk it. “Knock Out I just wanted-” Soundwave felt Knock Out’s field flare again, he felt energon flood his mouth and he tried to spit it out but it just dribbled past his lips.

“I DON’T CARE WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANTED! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I WANTED? OF COURSE YOU DO BECAUSE YOU DENIED ME OF IT! SICKED LORD MEGATRON ON ME! HAD ME THROWN IN ISOLATION FOR TWO CYCLES!” Knock Out’s voice grew calm, quiet, careful. He was almost there. “I came to you, begged you to let me go! Let me save him! I knew I could! I would have torn her apart.”

“We couldn’t risk it, we couldn’t risk you. Not now.”

“I felt him die in there. Slowly. Klick by klick, groon by groon he just faded away and it was all your fault. So go ahead! Tell me what it is that you wanted for me!”

“You know what I wanted. I’m glad he’s dead!” Soundwave steeled himself for the pain. The sound of Knock Out’s defibrillator opening louder than every clash of metal against metal Soundwave had ever heard in his entire life compounded together. His frame felt as if was being dissected, atom by atom, as if Knock Out was his own, planet, his own universe and Soundwave was being crushed by the gravitational pull. The burn didn’t even matter, his circuits were raw but his spark felt like it was coming undone as if it was being ripped from his chest by force of will. Then it ended. Not all at once as if he were free but slowly, agonizingly slowly.

Soundwave heard the medbay doors swish open, Megatron’s heavy peds, actually running into the room, Laserbeak's terrified, audial disrupting squawking. Carefully he pulled Knock Out’s talons free and laid the blown out mech carefully on the floor and couldn’t help but let his gaze linger on the still frame, still glowing like a star, optics cracked….he’d need replacements. They’d be a brilliant red for about a groon or two before they’d go back to being the smoky burnt he was used to. Soundwave lightly fingered the rendered metal of the hole he had made as he felt Megatron’s sevo briefly grace his back before the warlord tore it away. Megatron had plenty of protection but his digits had a fair bit of circuitry in them thanks to his cannon.

“Soundwave what happened here?”

“I handled it, my lord. Comm Dreadwing, he needs a patch job if he’s going to last the cycle?”

“Excuse me? He tried to kill you! The only thing he’s getting is short fall off the skydeck!”

Soundwave stood on shaky peds and slowly took off his mask so he could look the bigger mech in the optic. “So? When has that ever stopped you from keeping your playthings? You forced me to deal with Starscream for eons. Besides, we still need him. So comm Dreadwing Megatronus.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again for reading! Kudos, comments, and requests are always welcome. I can do more than just tfp but it's my love so if you have a prompt feel free to throw it my way. I'm trying to get better at shorter stories.


End file.
